My brother has schizophrenia which is pretty severe and has seen him spend the last decade or so in and out of mental institutions dozens of times. It really is like a jail, and the staff are often horrible and abusive. Its common for them to have delusions of persecution, and often with no justification, but when you do have a situation where actual persecution and injustice is going on, it amplifies the condition terribly. Now he is in the same hospital, but this time in a program called the 'social learning program' where it's a much more communal environment based on developing social skills and rewarding good behavior, and all the nurses are selected more carefully for those that are more caring and skillful. The difference in how this affects him is pretty huge. It's a shame that this is only one small unit in the hospital and the rest is run with an antagonistic prison mentality that would break anyone, no matter their mental health, the whole thing should be run like the SLP.

Not to mention the social stigma in our already individualistic and isolated society. It can make the already painful situation of having mental health issues become extreme.